


Iron Out my Creases

by taylor_tut



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fever, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pneumonia, Sick Character, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: This was a request from my Tumblr for Daisy taking care of Jon when he's ill :) title is from the Beetlejuice musical lol
Comments: 7
Kudos: 155





	Iron Out my Creases

Daisy sometimes has a difficult time, particularly with Jon, differentiating between curiosity and the Hunt. When her ears perk up at an unknown sound, is the adrenaline that pumps through her veins from fear, or is it the desire to chase? 

Does it even matter to the Entity? 

When she hears the sound of harsh, deep coughing from the archive room, she can practically feel her pupils dilate in preparation, and she cannot deny that it’s the promise of weakness that has her stopping outside the door instead of just walking past, as she might have done just a year ago. The coughing ends in an awful wheezing sound, and it’s obvious, at least to her heightened ears, that it’s Jon who is struggling to catch his breath behind the door. 

She doesn’t really need the Hunt for that one, though: it’s been obvious for over a week that Jon’s been ill, though the cold he’s been fighting has sounded much more like a minor inconvenience than whatever is happening inside the archive room now. She winces, if only as a conscious effort to feel a bit more human, as she listens to Jon manage to finally get the cough under control after far too long, then groan because he clearly thinks no one can hear him. 

Pushing past the doubt that she’s checking on him because he’d be easy prey, Daisy doesn’t bother to knock on the door before opening it and entering the room to see Jon, face down, at the desk, head buried in his arms and shivering so badly that she can see it from the doorway. 

Whatever bug he’s got now, it’s not a cold anymore. 

“You sound rough,” she announces. She’s expecting Jon to sit up to curse or glare at her, but apparently, a week of barely sleeping from congestion and the obvious worsening illness has taken too much out of him, and when he picks his head up to do one of the above, his eyes flutter dizzily for a moment and his face pinches slightly in pain, curtailing any annoyed response he might have been preparing. He coughs again, measured, this time, careful not to spiral into another breathless fit, but it’s still so deep by the time he closes his mouth around them to make it stop that she doesn’t imagine he can really breathe any better than a moment ago. 

“God, have you seen a doctor for that?” she asks, and Jon rolls his eyes, scrubs a hand down his flushed, pale face. 

“It’s just a cold,” he claims, but his voice is wrecked and thin. It sounds like it hurts. 

“That,” she accuses, “is not a cold. You have to know that, right? You can’t possibly be that dense.” 

“Daisy, I’m very busy, so if there’s something you need—” 

“Busy,” she echoes mockingly. “Busy sleeping at the desk? Yes, I saw. Looked very productive.”

He sighs. “I don’t have the energy for this,” he mutters under his breath, and he really looks like he doesn’t. “What exactly do you want?” 

“To see if this is enough to do you in,” she says automatically, and they both blink confusedly for a moment before she frowns in anger at the slight electric tingling sensation that makes her tongue taste slightly like copper. “Seriously, Jon? I thought you agreed to stop compelling us.” 

To Jon’s credit, he looks just as surprised as she does. “I compelled you?” he asks. She nods, and Jon looks troubled. “I didn’t--I… I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intent.” 

Does she believe that? She isn’t sure. Dubiously, she takes another few steps into the room, crossing until she’s stood in front of his chair, and decides that yes, she does, because he looks as terrible as he sounds, and she can smell fever wafting off him in thick waves. 

“You need to go to bed. Sleep off whatever’s got your brain so scrambled that your self-control is slipping.” 

“Or,” he counters, “you could leave me alone. Can’t compel you if you’re not here.” 

“I suppose not,” she admits. “But you also can’t compel me if you’re sleeping.” 

Maybe it’s the fever, or maybe it’s just one of those rare times when Jon is willing to submit to someone else’s opinion, but his silence is amenable, if annoyed. 

“You’re not going to get any work done until I agree to lie down, are you?” 

Daisy allows herself half a smile. “I’m not going to get any work done, period.” She hovers as he stands, visibly lightheaded, and he hardly makes it to the hallway before he’s shaking his head, grasping out blindly for anything he can use to lower himself down to sit on the ground with his head between his knees (what he happens to find is her arms). Daisy has never seen him like this, and of all the things she’s watched him go through, this is the first time she’s really ever pitied him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, probably because she hasn’t said anything, hasn’t done anything other than loom over him with her arms crossed, looking impatient and judgmental. 

“You really ought to see a doctor,” she suggests. “It’s been over a week, and you’re only getting worse.” 

Jon shrugs and sighs, looking like he didn’t really absorb anything she’d just said. Oh, well. She’s sure that the Eye will keep him from dying--honestly, she’s surprised that it’s allowed him to get this ill without intervening—and if Jon’s going to be too stubborn to get antibiotics from the chemist, then she’s not going to waste her time forcing him. 

On the other hand, she’s pretty sure that she’s his best friend right now, and that’s pretty damn sad, so she can’t quite talk herself into leaving him to his own devices. 

After giving him a few minutes to recover, she kneels in front of him. “Come on, Jon. You can’t sleep in the hallway.” 

He makes the regrettable decision of a petulant sigh, which results in another painful-sounding, half-drowned coughing fit. This time, her wince isn’t for show. He’s still shaking with chills, even despite his thick sweater. She draws the line at making him tea even if he looks like he could use a cup. 

“Think you can stand?” she asks, earning herself a glare that’s as likely to mean, “clearly not” as it is to mean, “of course; don’t patronize me,” but he takes her proffered hands, anyway, and at the very least, he doesn’t faint. He’s trying very hard to support his own weight, but his knees are trembling and threatening to give. She snakes her arm underneath Jon’s and feels the first real seed of fear plant itself in her stomach at the heat coming off of him. 

“I don’t want you to catch my cold,” he warns, and she rolls her eyes. 

“Just focus on putting one foot in front of the other,” she commands. Daisy isn’t certain she can even catch colds anymore, though she would likely have bet that Jon couldn’t, either, so perhaps there’s something to his worry. 

Well, if she does get it, at least that’s a few days away from this place, and she, unlike Jon, has the good sense to take the time off instead of pushing herself half to death. 

Slowly, painfully, they manage to make it to the spare room, where she deposits Jon onto the cot as gently as she can, which is to say, roughly enough that it knocks the wind out of him and starts him coughing again. She ignores that for the moment, focusing instead on making a mental checklist of how to handle this whole situation. 

It’s been years since she’s been ill enough that she’s needed someone else to look after her. In fact, it’s only been once or twice in her adult life, once with the flu and another time with a nightmarish case of food poisoning that ended up with her so dehydrated she’d needed IV antiemetics and fluids. 

She’d noticed that despite the fact that Jon hadn’t emerged from the archives since he’d shut the door earlier than anyone in the Institute had even arrived for work, the only thing he’d had with him was a tape recorder--no water bottle, no mug of tea, no bowls or plates to imply he’d had a meal that day. 

“Okay, Jon, wake up,” she demands, snapping in his face because he’d tried to fall asleep as soon as she’d laid him down on the cot and he’d covered himself with the blanket. “I need you to answer some questions for me.” 

Jon cracks his eyes open the tiniest bit to look at her. 

“When was the last time you ate?” 

Jon shakes his head, paling just at the thought. “Not hungry.” 

“Not what I asked.”

He’s beginning to get annoyed, and not in the typical, prickly, Jon-like manner in which he normally tries to act like others caring for him is the biggest inconvenience in the world, but a real, petulant reluctance to answer her. 

“I don’t know,” he huffs. 

“Right, that’s a good enough answer,” she admits. It means he definitely needs something in his stomach. An excuse to run to her favorite bistro down the road and pick up some soup for Jon and a sandwich for herself. “How much water have you been drinking?” 

“Why do you CARE?” he asks, and that genuinely throws her off guard for a moment. She can’t properly tell him that she doesn’t, but even though she can feel the weakened pull of another accidental compulsion, (he can feel it, too, apparently, because he bites his lip and apologizes), she finds that the answer doesn’t come easily to her mind. 

“I take that to mean you haven’t been drinking, either,” she dodges, and he shrugs. “God, did no one ever teach you to look after yourself?” 

Though it’s half just a complaint, Jon answers, anyway, his tone dripping irritation and exhaustion. “No,” he snaps, closes his mouth around a few more rough coughs, and shivers. “Who would have taught me this?” 

That gives Daisy pause, stopping her from leaving to get him water and paracetamol. 

“Your… parents, I suppose? I don’t know. My mum always cared for me when I was ill as a child.” 

Jon’s teeth chatter with a particularly hard shiver. “My parents passed away before I was even in school,” he replies. 

Daisy frowns. It feels almost intrusive, she thinks, to allow Jon to share things that he would likely keep private were his temperature anything less than scorching. However, she doesn’t allow herself to dwell on the guilt for long--if Jon has unlimited access to every thought she has, then she can pry a bit into his upbringing while his guard is down. 

“Who cared for you, then?” 

“My grandmother raised me,” he replies. “But ‘cared for’ might be a bit of an overstatement.” 

Daisy looks pointedly away. “I… didn’t know that about you.”

“I don’t talk about it much.”

She nods. “I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.” Jon laughs humorlessly, then breaks off coughing. She doesn’t know that she wants to know what he’ll say in reply to her sympathy, but she doesn’t want to find out. “I’m going to get you some water,” she says. The sound of Jon coughing stays with her all the way down the hallway. 

Daisy snarls to herself when she turns on the electric kettle and even takes the time to add a spoonful of honey to the mug before she drops a bag of peppermint tea into the mug. While she waits for it to heat up, she fishes through the refrigerator in the break room for a bottle of cold water, then searches through Melanie’s drawer for a bottle of paracetamol. The kettle is still heating when she checks on it, so she convinces herself that she’s just killing time by tracking down the first aid kit to see if there’s anything useful. Largely, there isn’t: mostly gauze and bandages, antiseptics and even a suture kit, which is… questionable. But she does manage to find a digital thermometer, which she supposes can’t hurt to use. If nothing else, Jon will hate having to submit to having his temperature checked, and that’s worth the effort. 

When the kettle dings, she shoves everything she’s carrying into a plastic supermarket bag from the cupboard and pours the water into the mug before heading back to the spare room to check on Jon. 

Predictably, he’s asleep already. Daisy makes no effort to be quiet, but she still has to shake him awake even despite all the noise she’s making, which is a bit concerning, considering she’s woken Jon up from a desk-nap by dropping her pen on the floor before. 

“Wake up,” she commands, biting down on a smile when he groans. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I only need a few minutes; then you can go back to sleep.” 

The effort of sitting up makes him cough, and he turns away from her to muffle the sound in his elbow. She doesn’t miss the way he rubs his chest afterwards, wincing. The urge to annoy him has passed, so she doesn’t force the thermometer on him. Instead, she gives him three pills from the bottle, watches him drink water from the bottle (then makes him drink more; she’s finally satisfied when he’s drained about half), and sets the tea down on the floor next to the cot and tells him to drink it while it’s hot. 

Jon is barely awake by the end of it, which she has to admit is a new side of him. It’s almost endearing. Sometimes, she’s confronted with just how much she might have liked Jon, had they met under different circumstances--the man who listens to the Archers even though he hates it just so she has someone to talk about it with, the man who never realizes that she’s joking until just a beat after everyone else has, the man who went into the coffin to save her from the Buried. Had they had normal lives, they might have gotten on pretty well, really.

It makes her angry. It makes her hurt, and that hurt is Jon’s fault. 

“Jon,” she calls, and he pries his eyes open to look at her irritably. “I’m not going to sit vigil over you while you sleep. I’ve got things to do. Will you be alright alone?” Jon nods. “Come get me if you start dying, but not a moment sooner,” she warns. It’s mostly a joke, as if she’s forgetting who she’s talking to, but he seems to understand, anyway. 

She turns the light off as she leaves, then thinks better of it, flips it back on, and tries to push this from her mind so she can get some of her own work done. 

It’s around lunchtime before she hears from Jon again. Melanie hasn’t asked about him, which is about what she expects, and she rarely hears from Martin at all, these days. Basira hadn’t actually asked, but Daisy had told her all about it, anyway. 

She almost wishes that someone would press her about it, would ask if perhaps they should go check up on him, or at the very least, wake him for more medicine and some lunch. Melanie had gone to the bistro shortly after it opened, betting on the idea that Jon would wake up by noon feeling better and hungry, but he hasn’t made an appearance. She’d only allowed herself to text him once, and he hasn’t replied as of the time that she tosses herself onto the break room couch. 

“Long day?” Basira asks, barely looking up from the poke bowl she’d made and brought for lunch. Daisy groans. 

“Aren’t they all?” Basira shrugs and does that thing that both infuriates and impresses Daisy, where she’s quiet for an extra few moments whenever she can tell that someone isn’t done speaking. Jon’s compulsion has nothing on Basira’s curious patience. “Just had a weird start to the day, I suppose.”

“You mean with Jon?” she guesses around a mouthful of rice and sweet potato. Daisy shrugs. “I didn’t know you two were so close.”

“Oh, come off it,” Daisy chastises. “What was I supposed to do, just ignore him?”

“I would have.” 

Daisy shakes her head. “Not if you’d seen him the way I saw him, so docile and ill. He was so out of it; he was almost tolerable.”

“Think that’s a symptom?”

Daisy is about to retort when the sound of footsteps, clumsy and uneven, stop her. When the footsteps stop, she looks up to see Jon standing in the doorway, leaning against it for support. 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Basira greets sardonically. She waits for a reply that does not come. 

Jon looks even worse than when Daisy had found him earlier that day. His skin is a pasty-pale that she wouldn’t have even thought were possible for his complexion. Despite that he’s breathing rather hard, he’s not sweating. It takes her a moment to realize that he is, in fact, shivering. After another beat, which is beginning to become concerning on its own, she realizes that the faint rattling noise she’s hearing is his teeth chattering. He just stands there, clutching the door frame like it’s a lifeline and staring practically through both of them. 

Even Basira, for all her animosity toward him, seems a bit concerned. “How’s your cold?” she asks a bit nervously. 

“Daisy,” he manages to call out. His voice sounds more painful than earlier. “I think,” he says slowly, “I think I might be dying.” 

Basira finally puts her phone down. “What?” 

And then he's unconscious, fainting right where he's standing, and Daisy and Basira are both too slow to catch him. In seconds flat, they’re knelt beside him. Daisy presses her hand to his forehead and flashes near-panicked eyes to Basira. 

“He's burning up,” she frets, and Basira looks suspicious. 

“Like, spooky monster burning up?” 

Daisy shakes her head. “No,” she replies, “it's not--I mean, not literally BURNING. I think it's just a bad fever.” 

Basira begrudgingly reaches out to touch his forehead for herself, but she stops cold when Jon’s eyes begin to flutter open. 

“He's coming back around,” Basira says. 

“Jon, can you hear me?” 

In lieu of a reply, he throws his arm roughly over his face, annoyingly courteous even when he’s barely conscious, and coughs, rough and deep and now, finally, scary. He has to visibly fight against gagging, it goes on for so long, and when it’s finally done, he’s actually gasping. When he finally catches his breath, he groans, and it’s only when that sound makes her squeeze his bicep that Daisy realizes she’s been stroking his arm, and even more than that, he’s been allowing it. 

“Alright, Jon,” Basira says, “are you ready to take the advice we’ve all been giving you all week and see a doctor?” 

With surprising docility, Jon nods. “That… sounds alright,” he admits. 

Daisy shoots a concerned and fonder than she’d like to admit glance to Basira over Jon’s head, and after some warning, they manage to get him to his feet, where he’s able to take on barely any of his weight, and usher him out the door and into Daisy’s car. 

Daisy and Basira sit in the waiting room while he’s seen, which is pretty immediately after they hear him coughing and Daisy stresses that he’s fainted recently. Basira might have flashed her badge; she’s not sure, but within an hour, a nurse is standing in the waiting room with Jon, who looks still pale, but much more present. 

“Miss Tonner?” 

Jon is seated in a waiting room chair, as he still can’t keep on his feet for long, but the fact that they’re turning him loose is promising. 

“He’s alright, I take it?” she assumes, and the nurse smiles sympathetically. 

“He will be, if he takes it a bit easy for a while,” she says. “Someone should watch over him for the next day or so, just to make sure that fever doesn’t spike again.” 

Daisy nods and signals for Basira to come help her with him, but Jon stands of his own volition and while he still looks exhausted, he doesn’t waver. “We’ll keep an eye on him. Thank you.” 

Jon looks embarrassed by the whole ordeal, which means that at least he must remember it, but he doesn’t say a word until they get in the car and he lets his head lean heavily back against the passenger seat headrest. 

“Do you have any prescriptions we need to pick up?” Jon nods. “For the cough, I assume?” 

He nods again. “An antibiotic,” he replies. “And codeine. Possibly a sedative, too; I wasn’t really listening.” 

Basira whistles. “What monster bug do you even have?” 

“Walking pneumonia,” he replies, “and an ear infection.” 

“Ouch.”

“I'm sorry about the trouble.”

Daisy rolls her eyes. “I should have been more clear. The whole, ‘leave me alone unless you're dying’ thing was meant to be a joke.”

“No, no; I know that,” he replies. She would bet money that he's just saying that to be kind. “I find it… Difficult… To open up to people. Specifically about weakness. Especially these days. Beholding sort of makes the whole, ‘earning someone’s trust so they can confide in you’ thing a bit superfluous. But I'm trying.” 

“Well, so long as you learned a lesson here, it's a start.”

“It is. I did.”

Daisy offers the first real smile she's given in months. Jon takes it and gives her his own, simple and small and meek. And tired, so tired. 

“I've got a spare room in my flat. I'm not staying at the Institute overnight, and you're not supposed to be far from anyone's sight. Basira wordlessly heads for the closest chemist that's on the way to Daisy’s place. She wouldn't admit it out loud, but she finds a sort of comfort in mundane crises, these days, those problems which are not caused by the supernatural and which can be fixed with a few pills and a lie-in. 

The nagging reminder that Jon likely already knows that she feels that way, the fact that she can't hide that thought and keep it privately to herself, ruins it.

Well, if nothing else, she can at least hope that truth stings him just as much as her. 


End file.
